Lincoln, Nebraska, where I live, is on the western end of the Central time zone, and as a result, the sun goes down pretty late on the clock here. Even at this time of year, sundown isn’t until 5 PM, and it’s not really dark until at least six. We usually get home with the kids around five, and then we do dinner and playtime inside until bed. That means that the children, who are five and three, are rarely outside when it is really dark out, and they don’t get to see the stars, beyond the bright planets, very often.
The past weekend was an exception; it was Chanukah and there were many evening celebrations, as you are supposed to light the candles at sundown, so we were out past bedtime. On Friday night, as we went out to our car to drive home, my daughter, the older kid, looked up at the cloudless sky and marveled at the number of stars that she could see. I looked up too, and took the opportunity to point out one of the few constellations that I can identify, Orion. (Whenever I think about Orion, I think about John Guare’s “The House of Blue Leaves” — sorry.) “See, it looks like a person, with a top part and a bottom part, and those three stars are a belt,” I explained. My daughter looked at this a little more, and then asked, “Does the world want it to be like that?”
Interesting question — what she meant was whether the stars were intentionally arranged in the shape of a person, or whether it was just something that people made up when they looked at the stars. The answer is the latter, of course, although perhaps the ancients thought differently. Our conversation for the evening went on to other topics in astronomy (“Planets are round,” she said, “so it’s very hard to stand on them.”), but I kept thinking about what she had asked me.
As scientists, we collect data from the world around us, and try to make patterns out of it that we can understand. These patterns are theories, really, and as more data come in, we re-evaluate the theories to see if they are still consistent with the data. Do all the stars make shapes that look like familiar things? Are all of the measurements from the LHC consistent with a Higgs boson at 125 GeV? Are we humans just imposing an anthropic view onto the world? Measurements throughout particle physics, not just at the LHC, seem to support the idea of the Higgs mechanism. Is that consistency just a pattern that we have invented? Or does the world actually want it to be like that?
A year from now, we hope to have an answer to this question. As we head into 2012, a potentially decisive year for particle physics, I hope that all of our Quantum Diaries readers have the opportunity to ask, and answer, their own questions about what the world wants it to be like.
As you probably know, some social scientists argue that scientists construct the reality they think they measure. In recent years, this thesis has been softened to the idea of ‘co-production’ – that what we measure is partly determined by the baggage we bring with us and partly by what’s out there.
There’s probably some truth in this idea, but I think it ignores the difference between the context of discovery and the context of justification – discoveries in science have to stand up to questioning by researchers from different cultural backgrounds, all determined to prove the orthodoxy wrong!
Dear:
The higgs field and mechanism are strong theoretical implementations of our own imagination. It so happens that top scientists have the power to make or break things worldwide according to their imaginations. We could also imagine that, had we not been involved in searching for the higgs boson for over 5 decades, and put many 10s of billions of USD, gold, time, effort, etc… our physics world would have been 5-fold advanced on the right path into the future.
What I just said is not to be taken lightly. If this effort, skills, imagination, creativity, exploration, 10s of billions of USD had been invested in experiments before setting up the SM, then we would have found and set up a much robust, solid, and infallible SM in physics.
Existing SM seems to be reaching a deadlock with LHC results coming out, and neutrinos, dark matter, anti-symmetry and CP all of which showing surprises for a new high of physics rising. The problem is, some of our top scientist are very stubborn, to the extent that they would crack the earth to find if there is enough evidence of a higgs sitting at the geographic centroid of our earth.
I am not proud to see our top scientist at CERN an elsewhere wasting their energy, their gold time, funds and money to prove that after 40-50 yrs, the higgs is a false concept of our nature’s physical model and the SM as well. If this money was channelled to non-probabilists, we would have been 100 yrs beyond and ahead in physics than our current state “trying to prove something that does not exist”. We would also declare down the timeline that we have explored and made all 40 yrs of effort and money to prove higgs does not exist is a “huge conclusion and result” of CERN !!!!!!!
I conclude with matter is all a perfect liquid and fluid with low viscosity and hug variation of densities ranging from ultra light density (OUTERMOST ELECTRON REGION)to ultra high density down deep into the geometric nucleus. All particles are perfect liquid / fluid like plasma (RHIC recent description of plasma results as well CERN findings of plasma state of matter in yr 2000). Particles are themselves instantaneous creations and generation of fluidic matter (liquid matter) but with variations in density from ultra light (e)to ultra high (p,n,gluons,etc) that are generated under surrouinding electric, electromagnetic, magnetic, temp, pressure, stress, etc.
All matter is a liquid / fluid, plasmatic in nature but with extreme variations in density. MATTER DOES NOT CHANGE STATES like in our macroworld. it is always a perfect fluidic or liquid with ver low viscosity. liquidity makes matter penetrate each other and between each other very softy and easily. If particles were solid not liquid, it would not be able to be as penetrative (ex X-rays), their state of liquidity allows them to bend, mend, reshape, and go thru pigeon holes. Solids would not be able to be as penetrative and will knock off each other preventing atomic structure and nuclear structures from standing the test of billions of lifetime span.
I don’t know…
fluidic
sorry! running fast i forgot to mention that diffusion theory whether in liquid-2-liquid diffusion or liquid-2-solid or even liquid-2-gas diffusion rates in all 3,4, or more dimensions is what makes matter as perfect liquid behave in the super way it displays itself in, in almost all life states, changes, transitions, etc.
diffusivity of the liquid form of matter makes things what they really are before us.
thanx, fluidic